Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Monday October 04, 2004 @11:50AM
from the takes-two-to-tango dept.

SpaceShipOne's second flight was a success, the craft successfully launching from mothership White Knight and returning safely about 20 minutes later. If the flight is certified to have reached the X Prize's target height (62.5 miles) before its safe return, it will win the $10 million purse, and more importantly attain the prestige of repeatably (if only technically) reaching space, on a budget embarrassingly smaller than NASA's. Today's flight was manned by 51-year-old test pilot Brian Binnie (rather than Mike Melvill, who piloted last week's trip), and according to spectators present at both launches seemed even smoother than last week's flight. The view from the sidelines was incredible. flapjack submits a link to CNN's coverage of the launch (which lists a claimed height attained of 368,000 feet), noting "Interesting to note that a majority of its funding ($20-$30 million) was put up by Microsoft's own, Paul Allen." See also the official X Prize site for continuing live coverage. Update: 10/04 17:05 GMT by T: I was able to attend the launch; read below for my short sketch of the event.

Impressions from the launch:

I got to Mojave yesterday evening (it's a long way from El Paso), slept in my car, and got to the airfield itself just before 4 a.m. Traffic on state highway 58 was brisk already, though not clogged (which it later became), and nearly every car was turning onto the two-lane entrance heading for acres of packed-dirt parking spaces near the runway from which SpaceShipOne would take off.

The crowd which built up in the following hours was surprisingly quiet on takeoff, which happened right at 7:45 local time. Not exactly hushed -- perhaps "hesitant" is a better word, or maybe just waking up. Only scattered clapping (guilty!) as the White Knight / SpaceShipOne piggyback duo lifted off, followed shortly by two chase planes, an AlphaJet and a Beechcraft Starship. The enthusiasm grew, though, as the flight progressed; a P.A. system kept the spectators informed of the trip's progress.

When SpaceShipOne finally separated and fired upward ("Good release, good release!" over the P.A, followed by enthusiastic cheering), it was after three separate two-minute warnings, then for one-minute and 30-second intervals. After an 84-second burn followed by a clean shutdown, SpaceShipOne coasted to its final altitude. At 90 seconds into the flight, the ship was well past 100,000 feet, and out of sight to the unaided eye. At 7:51, an altitude of 328,000 feet was reported, but the ship was still climbing for the next 40,000 feet under its own momentum. The reported peak altitude is enough to top the previous record, set by an X-15 at 354,200 ft. in 1963.

The descent was happily uneventful. At 60,000 feet, Binnie experienced "slight oscillations" -- consistent with previous flights, according to the announcer, who continued to count down the altitude. At approximately 45,000 feet, the conditions are right for contrails, and more cheering erupted when those popped into view. The crowd perked up and cheered even more with the first of two sonic booms audible on the ground (the booms that occur during ascent aren't), pointing and shading their eyes from the sun, following the ship as it traveled in wide arcs to bleed off the energy of the ascent, followed by a smooth 3-point landing.

(Special thanks to the members of the Foothill High School band who traveled the three hours from Orange County to watch the flight and play both before and after the flight. The launch itself was surprisingly low on ceremony, and their playing provided a bit of well-deserved pomp.)

Suddenly that old commercial advertisement for a Hilton Hotel in space doesn't sound so wacky anymore. What with Richard Branson investing in the Spaceship One technology
for a fleet of commercial spacecraft.

After the first several dignitaries and rich adventurers (and probably pile of useless pop stars and actors/actresses) the thing will probably be booked
solid with geeks with telescopes.

i wonder if William Shatner can get me cheap tickets through Priceline...

This post is about SpaceShipOne, REAL SpaceShipOne. This post is awesome. My name is James and I can't stop thinking about SpaceShipOne. This ship is cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

Facts:1. SpaceShipOne is a spaceship2. SpaceShipOne flies into space ALL the time.3. The purpose of SpaceShipOne is to flip out and do barrel rolls

Weapons and gear:

Rubber powered rocketWhite Knight mothershipFloating M&Ms

Testimonial:SpaceShipOne can fly anywhere it wants! SpaceShipOne sonic booms ALL the time and doesn't even think twice about it. This ship is so crazy and awesome that it barrel rolls ALL the time. I heard that this guy was flying SpaceShipOne. And when some dude launched the rocket the SpaceShipOne started oscillating like crazy. My friend Chico said he saw M&Ms totally float inside SpaceShipOne just because it was in a parabolic arc.

And that's what I call REAL ULTIMATE POWER!!!!!!!

If you don't believe that SpaceShipOne has REAL ULTIMATE POWER you better get a life right now or they will win the x-prize. It's an easy choice, if you ask me.

SpaceShipOne is sooooooooooo sweet that I want to crap my pants. I can't belive it sometimes, but I feel it inside my heart. SpaceShipOne is totally awesome and that's a fact. SpaceShipOne is fast, cool, strong, powerful, sexy, and 31337. I can't wait to start watching my Star Wars DVD next month. I love SpaceShipOne with all of my body (including my pee pee).

Sounds great, if you want your summer vacation to last about 75 seconds.
Oh, and cost US$200,000
And have a non-trivial chance of killing you

One day this will all be routine and our children's children will be fascinated that people went into space on those Saturn V powered mostrosities or even the space shuttles. You have to look past the present and visualize the future. After a few crotchety space stations, what's to stop someone from building a hotel/resort/convention center in space? Money. Practicality? Don't talk to me about practicality, I've been to enough convention centers and you oughta know people go there to get away, shoot some golf, etc. All of which and new entertainment possibilities be made possible in Zero G. The only concern I'd have about such a thing is radiation and stray space garbage smacking into it, but I think they could get that sorted out too.

Dream a little.

we've got another broken window, cruise over to the space K-Mart and get a space scooter full of whoever is hanging around to work on it.

Dream a little
I can (and do) dream a lot, and I'm looking forward to a day when parabolic descent lasts for more than a few brief seconds, but the parent poster extrapolated from today's events into "Suddenly that old commercial advertisement for a Hilton Hotel in space doesn't sound so wacky anymore" and I disagree.
I think it still sounds as absurd as it did when it first aired, perhaps more so now, because I now have a more educated appreciation for just what it takes to get into space, let alone orbit.
Today is a watershed event in human history.
Today does not herald in the age of zero-G convention centers.

I would argue that the first manned flight in space was the first step toward zero-G convention centers. Today is just one rung of a very tall ladder.

A very important rung, because it is civilian, privately funded, done on the cheap, was done on the first attempt, has attracted more venture capital, uses a safer fuel, and more importantly it sparks the imagination of millions of kids, of all ages.

Space hotels (of some sort) are not likely in the next 5 years, but as a 40 year old, they just MIGHT be in my lifetime. I had not thought so until recently.

Your chances of dying or being seriously injured in a car, by comparison, work out to about 1:125.

I would say that right now, space flight has a higher than 1:125 chance of serious injury and/or death, but not substantially, and not as the technology matures. I think it will evolve to being quite safe, personally.

The risk for an incident involving a car is much higher than that involving an airplane because most people's exposure to cars is far higher than airplanes. I interact with cars as a driver, passenger, or pedestrian every day. I might fly, as a passenger in an airplane, once or twice a year.

The risk of traveling by plane is lower than by car even if you compute it per mile travelled. It's not lower because you fly by plane less often. You are a lot less likely to die on a 400-mile plane trip than you are to die on a 400-mile car trip.

The risk of traveling by plane is lower than by car even if you compute it per mile travelled. It's not lower because you fly by plane less often. You are a lot less likely to die on a 400-mile plane trip than you are to die on a 400-mile car trip.

I've seen that claim often. And suspect it's true. (I was in a plane, for instance, that blew ALL the tires on one side when it touched down - due to improper maintainence. I'm afraid I wrecked the captain's day when I congratulated him on the landing - he'd just bet another crwe member that nobody noticed anything.)

But I'd trust it a LOT more if any auto fatalities of auto passengers in the horrendous traffic near airports (where you WOULDN'T have been driving if you didn't have to go there to transfer to/from the plane) were counted toward the air travel, rather than car travel, totals.

Actually you perspective is incorrect as well. We already have airports where aircraft are stacked 20 deep and are landing less than 2 minutes appart nearly around the clock and still the percentage of accidents is miniscule.

The factor that makes all the difference between accidents from flying verses driving is based on training, currency, and type rating. You only need one generic license to drive any passenger vehicles and in most states there are never any requirements other than paying a fee to get it renewed. Also the requirements to show driving profficiency are so pathetically low and the odds of ever lossing your license even more so when compaired to that of a pilot's license.

Essentially if they held drivers to the same standards as they did pilots right off the bat at least 25% of the population would never be allowed to drive, ever. 75% of the remaining population would not be allow to drive anything but a 50hp compact car at speeds less than 40MPH during the day and only on nice clear weather free days. Also nearly anyone involved in an accident where they were at fault or illegal activity would loose their license until a governing board could review the discretion and then most likely if they were found to be negligent loose it for several years if not permanently.

For some odd reason I see the number of auto accidents being greatly reduced if that were the case.

There've been a few reply posts to point out the fact that flying is safer than driving regardless of exposure, but here are some numbers for the interested:

According to the Research and Special Programs Administration Office of Hazardous Materials Safety (who said our government is bloated?) here are the stats:

Motor Vehicle-General population risk for accidental death: 1 in 6,300 per year-1.7 deaths per 100 million veh. miles

Commercial Air Carriers (Includes large and commuter airlines)- General population risk for accidental death: 1 in 1,568,000 per year- 0.19 deaths per million aircraft departures

To compare trip by trip risk, I'll estimate an average car trip at 20 miles. That yields 1.7 deaths per 5 million car trips, compared to about 1 death per 5 million airline departures. So using this estimate of car trip length, taking a car ride is almost twice as risky as taking a flight.

For some more perspective, I took a class on health care two years ago that spent a lot of time on an Institute of Medicine report [nap.edu]. The report is famous for showing that preventable medical errors in hospitals are responsible for more deaths every year than motor vehicle accidents.

And the industry that health care experts often use as a model for improvement? The airline industry.

So you're healthiest in a plane...if you can't afford to fly all day, then a car will do. But don't go to a hospital!

It only takes 15 hours of instruction until you can solo under the new Sport Pilot rules, full license can be obtained in as little as 20 total hours (minimum).

Private pilot certificate is 20hrs to solo and 40hrs total (minimum).

It takes absolutely no permits or instruction for you to legally climb into your very own (single-seat) ultralight... though you'd be very silly to do it that way. Even if you wanted to get training, you're only looking at 10-15 hours of work before you're on your own.

Yes, but the problem with those statistics is that they obscure the truth. If:

1) You are over 25;2) OR you are not male;3) AND you travel mostly on divided highways as opposed to secondary roads;4) AND you travel in the daytime or early evening, rather than late at night when drunk people are driving;5) AND you yourself are not drinking or smoking or pill popping or talking on the phone or otherwise not paying attention;6) AND you're actually wearing your seat belt;7) AND the car you're driving has good brakes (preferably anti-lock brakes);8) AND it has good tires;9) AND it's not some junker with bad shocks and loose steering;10) AND you're driving in decent conditions, not when it's snowing or icing up

THEN what is the probability of dying in a car crash? It's basically the chance of being hit by or running into a random nut. Which is very very low.

If on the other hand you are under 25, driving too fast with your friends, out late at night and drunk/driving with drunks, cruising secondary roads, not wearing your seat belt, driving an old junker with crappy brakes and shitty tires, then I guess you'd be safer strapped to an airline seat.

Which is why statistics suck. Throw all the above variables into a multiple regression, then show me airplanes are "safer," and I'll believe. It won't happen, because the airlines would never fund such a study. Drunk teenagers keep the road death statistics high, and the airlines in business.

Suddenly that old commercial advertisement for a Hilton Hotel in space doesn't sound so wacky anymore. What with Richard Branson investing in the Spaceship One technology for a fleet of commercial spacecraft.

...and Robert Bigelow's Bigelow Aerospace [bigelowaerospace.com] working on inflatable space structures. Robert Bigelow is also the owner of the Budget Suites of America Hotel Chain.

Bigelow has recently announced the logical follow-up to the X-Prize: America's Space Prize [space.com], a $50 million prize to build a vehicle capable of taking 7 people to an orbiting space habitat and back before the end of the decade.

Bigelow actually denies any plans for an orbital hotel, but with his background everyone keeps assuming that's his intention anyway.

So we're cheering the international community for having such a competition, but we should also cheer the (almost) all-American project team that WON said international competition.

It's a rather silly thing to get worked up about, IMHO. Bottom line, yes, anyone can compete, but yes, an American team *did* win it.

It's like rants about what "could have" happened if the quarterback had thrown for 2 more touchdowns, or if Lee had flanked instead of going up the middle at Chancellorsville, or whatever. Does it really matter what "coulda/shoulda" happened? No. Does the fact that an American financier, designer, and builder won the prize? Sort of. Does it mean noone else could have done it? Of course NOT.

There's nothing wrong, inaccurate, about doing it first; but there's no claim that only Americans can do it, or "could have" done it first. There is *something* to be said about doing it first, and I like to think that's all the original poster was driving at. First in Flight, and all that (and please, PLEASE don't turn that into the conspiracy theory of the day as to who REALLY flew first).

After all, this is about privatized, commercial access to space. We should all know that first in buys you something, doing it better and/or cheaper and/or cooler can ALSO mean something, when it comes to commerce. Apple didn't invent the portable music player, Betamax came before VHS (right?). Paraphrasing Churchill, this isn't the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning.

...it's the rest of the world that is too modest. To be fair, the Americans are front-and-centre on this project so kudos to them as long as they remember they got there with a little help from others.

The US sometimes isn't the leader in Aerospace but give them credit when it's due. Russians and Canadians bet them in the sattelite race--the Canadians also beat the Americans to Mach 2 flight speed. And the REALLY big, complicated projects are the result of collaberation between all three of those nations among many others. However one thing the US consistently tops the world in is national pride and the associated amitious goals they have set. Only Amercans had the balls to reach for the moon and actually REACH it. When they win they win BIG.

Thank God rocket scientists don't get into pissing matches like the ones here or nothing would get done.

[sigh] Everything private parties have so far done in space, the government did first. Look, I'm as enthusiastic about the prospect of being able to buy a ticket to the Moon for my 50th birthday as the next geek, but to say that the government is "keeping us from doing it right" when, in fact, the Rutan team built on decades of NASA experience is just absurd. As with most major enterprises, a combination of public and private efforts will get us much farther than either could on its own.

[sigh] Everything private parties have so far done in space, the government did first. Look, I'm as enthusiastic about the prospect of being able to buy a ticket to the Moon for my 50th birthday as the next geek, but to say that the government is "keeping us from doing it right" when, in fact, the Rutan team built on decades of NASA experience is just absurd. As with most major enterprises, a combination of public and private efforts will get us much farther than either could on its own.

Walk before you crawl, padawan.

The difference is, this is a bottom-up approach to space travel, with much larger socio-economic implications. What's the incentive for the government to go to space? Exploration, a little research, mostly the "because it's there" argument. That doesn't generate much initiative. What's the incentive for a private company to ferry tourists to sub-orbit? $200,000. Each. As more people make the trip, the companies will get better at their craft, building more efficient, higher-performace vehicles. Pretty soon, people will be going to orbit for the same price they went to sub-orbit, and the price will be going down all the time. Cargo capacities will increase, and the cost-per-pound to high Earth orbit will decrease dramatically. At that point, it's economically viable for a large corporation to purchase vehicles that would allow them to grow near-perfect crystals in microgravity, for instance, to be used in optics or timepieces or jewelry. Hotels WILL be built in space. Industries will be born that we can't even imagine right now. Think about what the internet/home computing did as far as creating industries. No one in the 1960s would have even dreamed of the industries we have now. And most of it was due to a small company mass-producing a computer that fit on a table. Everything this private company did had already been done, by the government, and many other small companies followed suit. There were no computing advantages to making a computer fit on a table, since it was slower than the best room-sized computers of the day. There were only economic advantages.

The bottom line is that this is a window to getting thousands of people into space, and many more thousands working on ways to do it cheaply, efficiently, and safely. Once those pieces are in place, we will finally see the *real* space age. For a parallel, please research the rise of the desktop computer, the history of the automobile, and the entire airline industry.

I'm all for the future you describe. But of the three major technologies you describe that changed our lives in the 20th c. -- the computer, the automobile, and the airliner -- two (the first and last) became as prominent as they did largely because of significant government investment. The internet, of course, was a government project; the home PC built directly on computer-miniaturization techniques developed, not coincidentally, for NASA; and the Wright brothers' first customer was the US Army, and military demands drove aircraft development for the next half-century.

I will say it again, since apparently it didn't register the first time: we need both. Private enterprise provides innovation, competition, and efficiency. Government provides money -- money which industry could supply, but won't until profits are closely in sight -- infrastructure, and long-term planning. Neither is inherently superior to the other, and both work better in an environment of cooperation than in one of mutual ignorance.

Anti-government ideologues never seem to realize how much they sound like Marxists...

Yes, the Government is no longer able to keep us from killing ourselves in the name of adventure.

This statement would only make sense if you think the government should own your life. If, on the other hand, you believe individuals own their own lives, you'd be glad the government stayed out of the way.

Truthfully, a lot of these X-Prize contestans remind me of the guy who attached weather baloons to his lawn chair. Is it any wonder that Scaled won it? Not really, they where the only contender.

"More than two dozen teams around the world are involved in the competition. Many of these teams, realising that SpaceShipOne would in all probability take the X-Prize on Monday, are already setting their sights on orbital flight.

The problem is money. Scaled has Big Bux behind them. All the others involve huge model rockets (a good way to die). And it's not just the model rocket thing (hey, the V-2 is proven technology that eventually lifted man into space via NASA), its R and D. All these other programs just don't have the technical skill to build something other than a Roman candle.

He simply means he wishes it had been a closer race... not that anyone dropped dead trying. If Armadillo had launched their first yesterday, they'd still have lost the prize... it wouldn't mean that their second attempt had exploded, however. Think about that the next time you're in a hurry to reply.

Now that the Mercury missions have more or less been reproduced for ~$25 million, I'd like to hear some reassessments of modern Moon mission costs. Same for Mars. The media (and a lot of slashdotters by the way) like to come up with estimates which go something like "if Apollo cost $X billion dollars, Mars will cost 10 times that cause it's harder".

Based on the fact that this was an order of magnitude or two cheaper than comparable NASA missions, anyone care to extrapolate a Moon or Mars mission if NASA is just turned into a clearing house for prize money? I'm guessing that Zubrin's crazy estimates of less than $25 billion seem a lot less crazy now.

This is nothing close to the Mercury missions. Even the first twosub-orbital Mercury missions went nearly twice as high, and the restwere all orbital. This is closer to the X-15 project: carried up by aplane and dropped and then firing a rocket engine to just reach the edgeof space. There is a big difference.

"What is interesting is that in terms of costs, both efforts cost the $25 Million."

The X-15 program cost a heck of a lot more than $25,000,000... though it did make nearly 200 flights, rather than three.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter6.html: 'The program's total cost, including development and eight years of operations are usually estimated at $300 million in 1969 dollars. Each flight is estimated to have cost $600,000.'

So that would put X-15 development cost at about $180 million in 1969 dollars vs about $25 million in 2004 dollars for SS1. Whether it's a fair comparison is debatable, however, since the X-15 had to make high speed flights as well as high altitude flights.

I knew I would find posting like this one;-)
No they were not. Early Mercury missions were flying the ballistic trajectory. All the equipment (except the booster) was identical to the later orbital flights. The only different thing to do to a Mercury capsule to go orbital instead of ballistic was to push it harder with a more powerful booster.
As such, SpaceShipOne flights (which go straight up) are NOT sub-orbital in a Mercury sense.

No, no it doesn't. It doesn't encounter any heat whatsoever. It's quite cold in the upper atmosphere. The Shuttle generates a lot of heat upon re-entry, though. That heat is created by the friction of doing an atmospheric entry at a low angle and with high speed.

The genius of SpaceShipOne is that it essentially tumbles back into the atmosphere at a high angle of attack, with a high drag configuration, and very low speed. The low speed entry generates very little friction and therefore negligable heat.

The genius of SpaceShipOne is that it essentially tumbles back into the atmosphere at a high angle of attack, with a high drag configuration, and very low speed. The low speed entry generates very little friction and therefore negligable heat.

That's not genius. That's the happy byproduct of not going into orbit. SpaceShipOne is in no way capable surviving reentry from orbital velocities. Not even close.

If you look at an orbital craft's launch profile, you see 90% of the energy goes into horizontal motion, not vertical. All that energy gets dumped on the return trip. The most tricky part of any orbital craft is dumping that reentry heat, and the X-prize simply didn't require that kind of sophistication. The shuttle would have been orders of magnitude cheaper and safer except for that pesky little detail.

I think the point is that the cost of building a spaceship has gone down several order of magnitudes these last years. With those current "embarrassingly smaller" costs for reaching space, who knows what services and products and opportunities await ?

Rutan uses an engine of a very different design than anything used by NASA (Nitrous Oxide and rubber), and the re-entry configuration (feathering the wings to maximize drag)is totally new AFAIK. Think about it - the skin of this spacecraft is constructed of fabric and glue!!!

I would love to learn more about how Scaled was able to be so succesfull on such a limited budget using a completely new and radical desgn. There is probably a lesson here applicable to just about any engineering endeavor.

To claim that private companies will invest the money necessary to generate a similar body of data making the next leap in space commerce possible is foolish.

So you are saying that the X-prize that generated SS1 was foolish? But it has worked!

Business will need to be convinced that they can make a profit for their investment.

Apparently you missed the announcement. Funnily enough, a few days ago, Branson just announced that he had agree to pay for the R&D of the passenger version of SpaceShipOne, Virgin Galactic [virgingalactic.com].

Looks like the X-prize has worked. That's exactly the situation that it was intended to create. The whole point is to improve the confidence factor for businesses to invest in space tourism. If suborbital is even halfway successful, orbital should be right behind it.

In some ways it is cheaper than suborbital- you get orders of magnitude more zero-gravity time per dollar.

Oh COME ON! Yes, that was a fantastic achievement... I've been cheering Scaled on from my desk, and grabbing every bit of information I can about this. I find it incredibly exciting. But your comment "Take a look at Scaled Composites' expenditures and then compare then with those of NASA for one damn shuttle launch. Then shut your mouth." is incredibly silly. The space shuttle is doing a far more difficult job, a job that SpaceShipOne cannot conceivably do. Comparing SpaceShipOne to X15 is fairer, but then you *CAN* justifiably say that Scaled has benefitted from NASA's research.

None of this takes away from Rutan et al.s fantastic achievement. But let's keep a little perspective : NASA has problems, but it still has achieved an incredible amount, and it (and the smart people who work there) deserve a bit more respect from the slashdot crowd.

"Microsoft Money," as you put it, has done some very [emplive.com] interesting [sciencefic...rience.com] and beneficial [gatesfoundation.org] things. The X-Prize isn't the exception to the rule, it's pretty much the standard [childrensvaccine.org] practice [gmsp.org].

In both cases, only a pilot was on board. The total required weight - 270 kilograms, or 595 pounds - was made up of the pilot, video documentation equipment and personal items selected by the staff at Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, and the X Prize foundation, including Rutan's college slide rule, a teddy bear that will be auctioned off for charity and seedlings.

And, on the first flight, the ashes of Rutan's mother. Otherwise, Rutan said, "we are not flying things that will end up on eBay and be sold or dealt with in any commercial nature at all," Rutan said before the first flight. "There's only a couple of things that are charity related, the rest are things the person who flies it has signed an agreement with us that he will not sell it, that it is for him and his family."

Its also a hell of a lot later than when NASA did the same, with technology that is more widespread and cheaper to boot. When NASA did their shots, it had to invent pretty much all of the technology, whereas Scaled Composites had the benefit of all the public knowledge now available about space travel. Not to put a cloud on this success, but come on guys, comparing it to NASA and saying its much cheaper just isnt fair.

That is the point - to 'technically" do it. Sure the X-prize is won, but like a first in anything this is a starting point not a finish line.

I'm sure more technically minded will discuss practial applications and new limits to be beaten. But I'm glad I was here to "witness" this. I imagine in 100 years when people will talk about this like they talk about kittyhawk now.

NASA does a lot more with its budget than "only technically" reaching orbit. And despite a few tragic "early terminated" missions, its safety record is extremely high, especially compared to its competition. And the amount of science it has released into the public domain has been vast, and nearly inestimable. We'll see how well you and I benefit from the privatization of spaceflight. I'm filing my preemptive patent on "extraterrestrial birth" now, while supplies still last.

And incidentally, it's been a long time since Paul Allen was "Microsoft's own" - as a major shareholder not employed at the company for decades, it's more like Microsoft is Paul Allen's own, to some degree. More appropriate is to say that the money invested in winning the X-Prize was "our own" before we paid the Microsoft tax.

This is an amazing feat. Definitely one of the top 5 space events in my lifetime. I do have a beef with the article summary though. This part:

it will win the $10 million purse, and more importantly attain the prestige of repeatably (if only technically) reaching space, on a budget embarrassingly smaller than NASA's

Although this is a great feat for a privately funded venture. This is only equivalent to NASA's first manned suborbital flight which happened in 1961. NASA has still put many people in space for extended periods of time, including 12 manned flights to the moon. And for all practical purposes, NASA started this adventure with no prior experience or knowledge of space flight. Also, a good portion of NASA's budget is for the first "A" in the acronym.

Again, this is a great feat, and its a first, but this is only the very beginning of private space flight.

Congratulations are particularly in order for Anousheh Ansari's family [girlgeeks.org] without whom the X-Prize would not have been funded.

Hopefully guys like Paul Allen and Bill Gates will get the idea they can do a lot more with their philanthropy money if they put up prize awards than if the schmooze it up with toadies. If they do they will start making major advances not just in space migration but in life extension, intelligence increase and fusion energy [geocities.com] which will finally embarrass the government into doing what it should have been doing all along the right thing as well:

I think its interesting to point out that Rutan & co. have made it into space, sure, just space, not orbit (but seriously, when did we start getting so picky? It is _still_ rocket science, and getting to space is still a technical achievement that took over 10 millennia of human technological progression), three times while NASA is still trying to cobble together a way of making their space shuttle (launch cost: about what every slashdotter COMBINED will ever make) safe enough to fly again.

So basically, the ONLY way that the US can send anyone into space right now is with SpaceShip One - making it one of 3 vehicles, including Russia's Soyuz and China's Soyuz-esque rocket, that can go into space with people in it.

Its also significant that I think this is the only completely reusable vehicle to ever go into space, as being able to do a one-week turnaround shows, having this capability has some pretty big benefits.

I watched the documercial last night on Discovery called Black Sky about the Scaled project, it's on again this week and there is a second piece coming up as well, it's worth watching.

After I watched it I was thinking about who it really shows as being behind the ball. Well NASA is the obvious choice, but NASA made an investment from the 70s on into Shuttle and with the tangled web they have to tread with Congress and internal inertia, I don't think we can say "Look, NASA sucks!"

Who it really makes look foolish, in my opinion, is the Chinese space program.

They have been ramping up for thier space program for decades, and thier way of doing it was to buy Russian hardware, reverse engineer it and then build it again. No one knows how much that cost the Chinese, but look at Scaled. 250 people and about 25 million in venture capital is running a space operation out in the desert. Yea they haven't orbited yet. But they will, I've read it costs about $80,000 in fuel and prep.

I'm a night owl. I mean, a serious night owl. I rarely get to bed before 2AM, and tend to get up after 9 at the earliest. However, knowing that today's flight was to start at 7AM, I was up, ready and waiting, at 6:30.

I was bebopping from one news channel to another (no, I don't get CNN), looking for coverage of the flight. About 7:30-ish, NBC said they were going to have the seperation live in about ten minutes. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Lots of blather about how Mt. St. Helens could erupt at any time, much blather about Hollywood news, politics, and/or both, but naft on Space Ship One.

Then I caught mention that it had hit the mark, and would soon be landing. Again, live coverage of the landing coming up on MSNBC. Again, nothing. Nothing. More Mount St. Helens blather, more Hollywood, more people selling unsound "treatments" for non-existant "diseases",, then, finally, on Fox, a shot of SS1 landing.

Total coverage, from 6 different networks' news shows? Under a minute. For an event that could well have a major impact on humanity for generations to come. Not even 60 whole seconds of air time. Compare this to Lindberg's landing, and the hullabaloo that caused.

I'm steamed. As NBC claimed they were going to have live coverage, and didn't, and NBC is now MSNBC, I really hope that Paul Allen will raise the roof about this. After CBS' fake memos, and NBC dropping the ball here, I REALLY hate to point out that the place that had the most coverage, and the timeliest, was Fox News.

...I REALLY hate to point out that the place that had the most coverage, and the timeliest, was Fox News.

Fox News actually had quite a bit of coverage. They only cut away during the (fairly) boring hour when the White Knight was still ferrying SpaceShipOne to 50,000 feet. Once it got close to separation, Fox stayed with it until well after landing, interviewing Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7 astronaut), Peter Diamandis (X-Prize founder), Eric Anderson (President of Space Adventures), and George Whitesides (National Space Society Executive Director). Their footage of the flight was not first-hand (it had another logo in the corner, so it was being rebroadcast), but it was quite good.

Remember, MSNBC (and Newsweek, owned by them) were the ones who saw China become only the world's third spacefaring nation and say, "so what?" Even if we end up with "The World's Craziest Rocket Explosion Videos", at least Fox is looking spaceward, while the rest of the (national) media has their heads in the proverbial sand.

On a related note, local coverage was really good. I was at the first launch last Wednesday morning, volunteering in the parking lot. Approximately 3 hours after the local Tuesday evening news coverage in L.A., traffic got really heavy. Seems the news coverage was compelling enough to make people drive through the night to get to Mojave. Even if the talking heads don't care, America apparently does.

"Interesting to note that a majority of its funding ($20-$30 million) was put up by Microsoft's own, Paul Allen."

In a rare break of Microsoft solidarity, Steve Ballmer says most people flying to space are stowaways and Microsoft will lead the way to space. "There is no way you can get there with NASA. The critical mass has to come from the PC, or a next generation lift-off device."

First, the oblig congrats. It's an impressive feat, even though it is sub-orbital.:)

Second, I notice Rutan did NOT go on the second flight. In fact, from the fact that the two "passengers" were balast (again!), I'm concerned that Scaled Composites were more concerned about the rolls in the first flight than they let on.

Remember, Rutan was all dead-set on going into space on the second flight, and the spirit of the X-Prize rules was that the vehicle was to carry passengers. The fact that only the pilot was on the second flight indicates that the potential publicity coup of being on the second flight was outweighed by the risks.

The only risks we're aware of are the "bang" heard on the first sub-orbital flight, and the propensity for SpaceShipOne to lose control on the edge of the atmosphere. The first problem was likely overcome, which means that the second problem likely has not.

Whilst I certainly applaud Scaled Composites for what they have achieved, I think it's worth stressing that they will need to achieve a lot more (on the technical front) before the technology becomes viable.

basically gave up on winning the X Prize. According to this press release [armadilloaerospace.com], they were dogged by two things: 1) they had pinned their hopes on using 90% peroxide as their fuel, but it wasn't available to them, and 2) a test flight crash on August 8th.

Carmack's team also has a better shot at Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize [yahoo.com] than any of the other Ansari X-Prize contenders [xprize.org]. The 90% peroxide delay resulted in a more economical and safer methanol/peroxide(50%) mixed monoprop booster that is ideally suited for first stage reuse during orbital flights.

But I must object to "embarrassingly smaller budget than NASA's." NASA had to do their first manned suborbital flight with 1950s hardware borrowed from the artillery boys, and without 40 years of prior experience to draw on.

The X Prize contestants are, in Newton's words, standing on the shoulders of giants. They're doing great things, and I applaud them, but there's no need to tear down other pioneers to build these guys up. The present work is quite impressive enough as it is.

This is obviously a great situation for innovation, not only here in America, but also in the world.. here's why the SS1 program will go farther faster than NASA.
NASA's governmentally funded and based.. they take all of their orders from the government. This is free enterprise at work here.
If it took this program less than 5 years to get to the point where it's at now.. imagine where we could be in 5 more years?
Trips to the moon, anyone?
Wonder who's going to be the first to start researching ways to create artificial atmospheric conditions on the moon. Will there be an X-Prize for that?

BTW, did anyone else notice that NASA TV didn't cover this flight? It's too bad, because the Ansari X-Prize feed was completely useless. Once people jumped onto the webcast, the poor server just didn't have the bandwidth to keep up.

I checked NASA TV first, which is where I watched last week's flight - and there was nothing.

In fact, I couldn't find any live feeds, although the 'News Multiscreen' thingy on BBC News 24 on Freeview was showing the launch. Yes, a tiny quarter-screen, silent view from a ground